Pure of Spirit, Dirty of Mind

The mirror where I put on my make-up jumps off the kitchen shelf. No one touched it. The shelf is exactly the right height for me and the light from the kitchen dormer window is good. My makeup is in a basket on the shelf below. The mirror doesn’t break, but it’s a bad sign.

My favorite palm tree, seen through current kitchen door in Hau'ula—

When I put on my white gauze dress there’s a thread hanging from the side. I pull on it. My skirt falls off. I know what’s happening. My energetic body has shifted into a new gear; sometimes it’s like someone put a quarter in my nickel slot. Light bulbs will leap out of sockets. Objects can explode. I’m operating at a new frequency and until I have integrated it the world around me is going to be unstable. It’s 1978— I’ve been working as a psychic in London for almost five years. I’ve learned about this thing, whatever it is. . . the energy suddenly amping up, and I know what to do. It’s not a big deal. I know I’m not crazy. I’m just upgrading.

I leave my garret-office-studio on the top floor of an 18th century building just behind the Hyde Park Hilton in Shepherd’s Market, leaving a note on the door to tell the seven people scheduled today that I’m not available so please call to rebook. Do I dare move my car? I know it’s a bad idea to drive. Once when this was happening I climbed into The Buffalo Princess, a darling 1955 Morris Minor (original blue-grey paint, red leather seats, split wind-screen), a bolt fell out—no brakes. There’s a spot on the other side of the street I can squeeze into, and if I don’t move I’ll get a ticket. A fast u-turn and I carefully slide into the slot. So far so good. She’s called the Buffalo Princess because I carry a heavy piece of old brown carpet in the trunk, which goes under the hood to keep her engine comfortable at night when it’s really cold. Buffalo rug, hence the name.

I’m wearing simple clothes. No threads to pull. Flats. No heels to trip over or catch in grates. There’s a pub around the corner where I’ll pick up a couple of bottles of lukewarm Guinness. A movie theater around another corner where I’ll sit all day watching movies and sipping Guinness until this jagged edge around me is smooth again. A cute story from the past.

Palm tree as seen from library door with its companion, the graceful bottle brush.

A couple of days ago a woman called me about a family member who’s losing it. Kundalini rising, menopausal, paranoid schiz. . . whichever, or all of these. She’s left her husband and kids, her life as a high-control homemaking mom, and gone to Maui to train as a medium. Now evil voices are in her head, telling her bad things. She’s in trouble. She’s caught in the astral-crap garbage place and she can’t get out. Here’s the problem, or here’s how I understand it, how I make sense of something that has no basis in observable, evidential fact.

When you open the big psychic door everything can get in. That’s part of the deal. If you’re a doctor you don’t treat only the beautiful and the curable; you take on the hopeless and the horrible. . . sometimes you do good, sometimes you’re helpless in the face of the dark place. But like docs, if you’ve had good training, or are a patiently self-educated sensitive, you learn to navigate through the places most of us prefer to ignore or deny. The astral (one of the descriptive terms used) is where the trash goes. Of course it’s illusory. But what isn’t?

Close-up of palm tree's eloquent trunk.

I spoke two weeks ago with a fascinating woman, Joyce Hawkes, a biophysicist and cell-biologist, who was hit on the head by a leaded glass window and after more than an hour of unconsciousness, woke up to discover that she could heal people by working on the cellular level. We also talked about the place she visited while she was unconscious, a place I’ve learned to call the Heaven of the West. I was describing it to my friend, Lama Wangchuk, and he laughed, “oh, the place of no negativity, that’s the heaven of the west.” Joyce and I shared some memories of its glories. . . I don’t remember commiserating about coming back here, but we may have. I know when I’ve been there, and it hasn’t happened often, it’s hard to be back here. We are all under more stress than we’re designed to endure. Sometimes I think it’s a serious design flaw. . . other times I think the stress is the fuel that drives our individual and group evolution. We must evolve because we can’t stand not to.

That’s what I’m talking about. When things start crashing around me I know I’ve got to take the next step on some fictional ladder. I also know the crazy housewife medium is forcing, however painfully, some necessary growth that she may have avoided for years. I know there is a shitty hell place that is completely real and not real at all. And I’ve been in the Heaven of the West.

(A final note: Lama Wangchuk says the Heaven of the West isn’t the best place to go because you can’t get enlightened there. . . he says you have to go to the central heaven for that. “Huh. . .” I, not so gracefully, reply. I suppose my aspirations are more modest. No negativity. Yum.)